Farage claims chance he could be PM within four years is up to 25% – as it happened

Nigel Farage at a Trump rally in November 2024. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

5.34pm GMT

Afternoon summary

• Keir Starmer has said that the government will leave “no stone unturned” in investigating the failings by government agencies that contributed to allowing Axel Rudakubana to murder three young girls at a dance class in Southport last summer. He made the statement as Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, suggested ministers unreasonably held back information about the killings from the public last summer. Farage even accused the government of a “cover-up”. (See 4.40pm.)

• Ministers have congratulated Donald Trump on his inauguration. Within the last few minutes David Lammy, the foreign secretary, posed this on social media.

Many congratulations President @realDonaldTrump on your historic return to the White House.

There are no greater allies than the UK and US. Our close economic, security, intelligence and cultural ties deliver growth and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.

I look forward to further strengthening the special relationship over the years to come.

But the Liberal Democrats have described Trump’s inauguration as “deeply worrying” (see 9.57am), and the Green party has called him a fascist (see 10.24am).

• Farage has claimed that there is a 20/25% chance he could become prime minister before Donald Trump leaves the White House. (See 11.50am.)

• Work will not begin until 2039 on some of the “40 new hospitals” Boris Johnson promised to build by 2030, after a Labour rethink on a pledge it called “a work of fiction” by the Conservatives.

• A bid by unionists in Northern Ireland to stop new EU rules for chemicals, including paint and household detergent, being applied in the region has been formally rejected by the government. (See 2.30pm.)

• A new artificial intelligence tool can warn ministers whether policies are likely to be very unpopular with their party’s MPs, using a search described as a “parliamentary vibe check”.

Updated at 5.37pm GMT

5.04pm GMT

Work on some of Boris Johnson’s ‘40 new hospitals’ will not start until 2039, Streeting tells MPs

Here is Denis Campbell’s story about the announcement.